January 1, 2015

Hey!

So it's New Year's Day in the MTC! Whooo! 2015!! Crazy, right?!

So this week has been another adventure. The zone got super crazy small this week with only two districts and fifteen missionaries left since we lost all of the Finnish and Albanian missionaries when they left early Monday morning. Elder Winegar and I woke up at 3 so that we could help them to their shuttles on time since we're the zone leaders. That was a lot of fun! Sad to see our friends that we've "grown up" with leave, but the're gonna do awesome and they all said they'd write us (hopefully). Medveczky Elder even told me to come find him after my mission so that we can keep practicing Hungarian! He gave us messages and notes to take to his family in Budapest. Sounds like everyone in Hungary knows everyone if you're a Mormon, so we'll see his family a lot while we're there.

Yesterday, we had the awesome chance to host again, and to help get the new missionaries settled in to the MTC life. Crazy enough, one of the first missionaries I saw was Elder Tyler Johnson from home! He was one of me and Ashton's super good friends, and it was so cool to get to see him here and give him a solid handshake half-hug! I also ran into my friend Sister Alicia Stigen from home during hosting! She's a super awesome example, and I'm so glad that Sister Layton from our District hosted her so that she'd be taken care of. I also saw Elder Taylor Kelly this week on Christmas! He's headed to Paris for his mission, and the other two are going off to Australia. Crazy to think that I've already been here for six weeks, and they've all just got here, and they're STILL going to leave weeks before I will. Hahaha.

Christmas Day was an experience I'll never forget. We woke up on Christmas to get dressed for the day, and it had snowed a solid six inches overnight! I was kind of scared because I really didn't want to be colder hahaha, but it was kind of fun to see something different for a change! We made snowmen and played in the snow for a while and it was a blast. Elder Nelson ended up coming to speak to us on Christmas Day, so that was way cool! The whole day was an awesome experience, but it was especially cool to open up our little "stockings" with nice thoughts and notes from the other people in our district. Some anonymous Santa had brought us some little gifts like a mini foam soccer ball and a finger puppet (kind of weird haha) and some chocolate and some fancy pens and stuff, so that was really neat to see.

Christmas Eve was even better though! We were asked to be the "angels" in our MTC Christmas pageant and to sing "Angels we have Heard on High" on stage in front of all 2000 missionaries here. That was okay, but then I found out we each had a solo, too! I was honestly pretty terrified because I've never done anything like that before, but it turned out to be okay and we all made it through! We rehearsed before the performance in this little glass alcove entry way kind of thing (like the ones at Malls that you walk through to get into JC Penny's or Macy's or something) and it was the most beautiful sounding thing I've ever heard. No piano or accompaniment, just plain singing echoing in this little glass room. It was incredible.

Not much time to write emails since I spent most of the time sending pictures your way, but I just hope that everything's going well in Mesa and that everyone's having fun! Smile and enjoy life, it's important to share happiness around! I love you all and look forward to writing again in a week! Nagyon szeretlek titeket! :)

Elder Priest, his companion, and

the Sister Missionaries

Elder Priest and his district 

Elder Priest and Elder Medveczky

Kinnon and his companion,

Elder Winegar, at the Provo, UT temple

Playing with Icicles 

Christmas dinner at the MTC

Christmas Day with Kinnon's district

Classroom window at the MTC

Elder Priest and Elder Kelly

Elder Priest and his first snowman

Kinnon and few of the other 'angels'

who sang for the Christmas devotional

Kinnon and other 'angels' from his zone

Hungarian missionaries and their socks

Kinnon on New Year's Day

with his district

Elder Priest and Elder Winegar

Kinnon's goofy MTC class